Peter Black's Freedom to Differ

Levi's viral hit

Wired reviews an effective viral marketing from Levi Strauss:

The hottest video on YouTube right now showcases a handful of agile hipsters effortlessly hopping, leaping and even back-flipping into their jeans.

Amateur videos of friends performing such stunts are common enough on YouTube, but this video is the work of professionals.

"We didn't want to overtly brand it as Levi's," said Erica Archambault, head of public relations at Levi Strauss, who confirmed Friday that the company is behind the viral video. "We wanted people to discover it on their own."

The acrobatic "Guys backflip into jeans" video ... was created to promote Levi's line of zipperless, button-fly jeans.

First uploaded Monday, the video has clocked a staggering 1.4 million views this week, garnering it YouTube's coveted "most viewed" spot. It's the kind of viral hit that ad agencies and their clients have been cooking up ever since Burger King scratched out an internet hit with its subservient chicken website in 2004.

Levi Strauss worked with San Francisco-based advertising company Cutwater to produce the video, which was shot in March.

Read more here.  And here is the video:

Another clever use of Twitter

Lost Remote highlights another very effective use of Twitter:

WCNC just used Twitter to cover the North Carolina primary. “It was incredibly successful,” says WCNC’s Kayla Castille, who said reporters and anchors “really got into it.” Of course, Twitter has been gaining popularity in media circles, from the New York Times to CNN to the Seattle PI. But there’s a difference between using Twitter as another distribution path for news updates and actually leveraging it as a distributed coverage tool. WCNC created different Twitter accounts for the station’s reporters and anchors covering the story, then it aggregated all their Twitter messages on a single page on WCNC.com. The end result was real-time, unmoderated updates delivered from multiple mobile devices covering the same story. Plus, it doesn’t force you to sign up to Twitter to follow the coverage. Pretty smart.

Read more here.

Why Twitter?

At Media Post's Online Spin blog Max Kalehoff offers a great explanation of why we Twitter:

I use Twitter, the micro-blogging platform. Each post is limited to 140 characters, so it instills succinct, efficient expression. And you only receive regular posts from those people you choose to follow, so you can eliminate attention polluters. While Twitter is significant in its own right, most significant is what it represents: the arrival of short-form communications, specially tailored for our growing attention deficit and love for instant gratification.

So someone recently asked me what value I get out of Twitter. Here’s the deal:

First, it fulfills basic human needs of self-expression, and I’m not afraid to admit that. Sometimes I spontaneously express how I’m feeling, while others times what I’m doing. Sometimes I document events, while at other times I express deep thoughts or analysis. Sometimes I’m too preoccupied for Twitter, but most times it works itself regularly into my workflow of life.

Second, it has become an important means of one-to-one and one-to-group communications. I estimate that 10% of my one-to-one communications take place on Twitter now. While it’s contributed to my problem of socialnetworkitis, sometimes it’s just the most convenient way to reach someone directly with a private message. This is especially true if you want to respond directly to something someone said on Twitter, and even more so if you know someone is more apt to respond on Twitter versus some other digital platform, like email. For one to many communications, it’s simple, straightforward and selective.

Third, Twitter’s a great platform to cultivate trusted members in a customized community — to solicit feedback and spark interaction on real questions and issues of everyday life and business. I can pose a question to my community and almost always expect numerous responses back — whether a request for a restaurant recommendation, a proposal to meet spontaneously for a social meeting, or to secure participants for a mini-brainstorm. This week I even announced the death of a family member and received several thoughtful gestures — both public and private. Your Twitter community tends to reward you in proportion to how much time you spend nurturing and pruning it.

Finally, Twitter posts are published quickly and, usually, publicly. While there are risks and obligations with that, there’re also huge benefits and opportunities associated with being spontaneous and visible. It’s part of being in the conversation, and managing your digital reputation. Twitter has critical mass — at least with several of my personal and business circles.

If I’ve convinced you there’s value in Twitter, the next question is: How do you grow and prune your Twitter community?

Read it here.

Sad Kermit

A very sad Kermit re-enacts the suicide attempt scene from the Royal Tennenbaums:

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

Global IP Index

Taylor Wessing has launched the results of its Global Intellectual Property (IP) Index:       

The Global IP Index presents a comprehensive statistical comparison of IP protection and enforcement in 22 of the world's leading economies, rating each jurisdiction for protecting and enforcing patents, trade marks and copyrights.
         
Based on an innovative analysis of surveys of senior industry figures globally and an array of published empirical data, the index provides an assessment of the best and worst jurisdictions to obtain, exploit, enforce and attack particular types of IP. Where once anecdotes, conjecture and even some prejudice may have informed our view of a particular jurisdiction, we are now able to rely on statistical analysis.

The Results

Based on the analysis, all 22 jurisdictions have been ranked in order of IP competitiveness, however it is perhaps more useful to consider the Global IP Index in terms of five groups or 'tiers' of IP competitiveness. The resulting groups are listed below:

                        

To see a detailed breakdown of the IP Index including rankings for each of the 22 jurisdictions in regard to specific Trade mark, Patent and Copyright Indices, country analysis and commentary on the findings, rationale and implications, download the full Global IP Index report here.

Interestingly, this is the copyright top ten:

1. U.S.
2. U.K.
3. Germany
4. Netherlands
5. Canada
6. New Zealand
7. Australia
8. Singapore
9. France
10. Israel

Reflections ...

This week Duncan Riley announced his new blogging venture, The Inquisitr (see my post here).  However in my mind an equally significant announcement was that  Skepticlawyer (Helen Dale) from Catallaxy and Legal Eagle from The Legal Soapbox are teaming up at in a joint blog venture, Skepticlawyer.  Although they are both lawyers, they have different interests and politics, they are always thoughtful and intelligent, and I enjoy immensely reading their perspectives on law, politics and life.  I wish them both all the best in their new collaboration.

This announcement, coupled with reading one of Kim Weatherall's now rare posts at Lawfont (see here), has made me think about possibly changing the tone of this blog, or perhaps launching a new blog.  I enjoy writing this blog and I like to think it presents an eclectic mix of tech news, videos, politics and occasionally a little law.  It certainly reflects what I read and watch each day on the internet.  However, this mix has occurred by accident.  When I began blogging I envisioned creating a more traditional law blog (or blawg) - one that you might expect a (semi-serious) legal academic to write.  Instead it has become something quite different.  Perhaps if I spent less time reblogging and posting links and videos I would have more time to write the sort of quality, original posts you see from Helen, Legal Eagle and Kim.  I spend so much time "reporting" and covering what others are saying that I find that I'm not putting my own thoughts and arguments on the law and policy issues that I find significant and interesting out to the public to be tested, challenged and improved.   To do this would mean fewer posts, but longer, more thoughtful posts.  And although it may well be more time consuming, it would also likely tie in with my teaching and research more closely.  That said, I like my blog now and I enjoy putting it together. 

Anyway, these are just some thoughts I've been having over the last few days.  I'd be interested to know what you think ...

Jon Stewart is like Bill O'Reilly?

The Associated Press reports on an interesting finding:

A journalism think tank studying "The Daily Show" doesn't believe many people get their news from Jon Stewart — because otherwise they wouldn't get the jokes.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism also said it was surprised at how much the Comedy Central late-night program resembles "The O'Reilly Factor," "Hardball" and other cable news shows in content.

The Washington-based organization asked its researchers to study a year's worth of "The Daily Show" tapes — hardly a grim assignment — after hearing the frequent claim that many young people learn about the world from Stewart instead of more traditional news sources.

Tom Rosenstiel, the project's director, said he doubts this is the case. He considers "The Daily Show" more of a political satire in the tradition of newspapermen like Art Buchwald, H.L. Mencken and Russell Baker.

...

The show is actually making some very serious political commentary, "but they use humor to do it," Rosenstiel said.

...

While Stewart aims most of his firepower at Republicans, the show is actually pretty balanced in its bookings, the study noted. Of the clearly partisan, 15 guests were conservative and 18 were liberal. Presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain was a guest on Wednesday's show.

"The fact that the lineup of guests is actually even surprised me," Rosenstiel said. "I thought going in that there weren't that many Republicans who would be willing to go on the show."

Read more here (from Yahoo! News).  Still, I don't think you'll see a riff like this from Bill O'Reilly:

Nine Network Australia Pty Limited v IceTV Pty Limited

Yesterday the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia handed down its decision in Nine Network Australia Pty Limited v IceTV Pty Limited, a very interesting copyright case relating to electronic TV programming guides.  The opening paragraph of the Court's decision neatly summarises the issue:

The main issue in this appeal is whether the primary Judge correctly rejected the claim by the appellant (‘Nine’) that the respondents (‘Ice’) had infringed Nine’s copyright in its television program schedules.  There is no dispute that the schedules are compilations and constitute original literary works in which Nine holds copyright.  Specifically, there is no dispute that Nine holds copyright in the ‘Weekly Schedules’ it distributes selectively to so-called ‘Aggregators’ approximately two weeks before the commencement of the relevant broadcast week.  However, her Honour held that Nine had not established that Ice, which provides a subscription-based ‘electronic program guide’ (‘EPG’) for television called ‘IceGuide’, has reproduced a substantial part of Nine’s copyright works.

The Court upheld the appeal, finding that IceTV had infringed Nine's copyright in its TV programming schedules.  I've followed this case for some (see, for example, here) and I hope to have something to say about it in the next week or so.  In the meantime, check out Kim Weatherall's excellent post on the case here (even if you're not a lawyer you'll be able to understand Kim's summary of the case).  And of course you can read the decision on AustLII here.

2008 Press Freedom Report

The 2008 Press Freedom Report of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance,  Breaking the shackles: the continuing fight against censorship and spin 2008 was launched at the Alliance's annual Press Freedom Dinner last Friday night in Sydney.  Read the full report here.